Bringing the Dog Salmon Home

Alaska has a multitude of backcountry gems.
The kettle pond is one of these precious finds. Its boundaries are perfect because a huge chunk of broken-off glacier ice falls off and melts there in a perfect round shape of a kettle.

Self-respecting people
of the Yukon River village.

Village morale is high,
but it is surely tested
when the dog salmon
do not arrive.

A ghastly site!
A mile ahead, the
kettle pond
overwhelming
anyone or anything
in its path.

The end of the
dog salmon world ... or not?

Jagged sheet
of polar-pack ice
builds a wall and
traps the dog salmon here,
a great dam blocking a
stream that feeds into
the Yukon where the
dog salmon spawn.

A man who wears a wooden leg, having lost his leg to a polar bear, stands next to Raven Seven Dreams.  "I will go back to the village to get the propane torches."

The sled maker who made this man's wooden leg as a gift makes the man serviceable to his community.  With a hint of get-even irony, the man wears on his good foot a boot made from the lower part of a polar bear's leg with sole and claws intact.

Here in this spot of open land, there is only a thin, frayed carpet of plants over the permafrost, and the lack of trees to hack for wood makes lighting a fire beside the chunk of ice to melt it out of the question, making for a change of plan.

"Give the dog salmon life," one says with tears, "so that I may have life."  Dog salmon set off a whole range of emotions.  He has diabetes and needs insulin.  He relies on the dog salmon to feed the sled dogs to deliver his insulin by dogsled.

Given the new spirit,
the future of the
Yukon River villages
holds promise and
hinges on the whims of
nature and science.

Now they can get
back to the cradle-rocking
rhythm of the seasons and
the age-old business
of survival.
The female salmon are
digging spawning beds
with their tails.

The Yukon River
village people
have a very unique
existence.
Their wellspring is
nature and community.

Authors Note: This is excerpted my novel THE BUCKSKIN SKIRT OAR TRAVELER.

Copyright 2005 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist